The farce which passes as a news media

I'm making sure this gets at least my little bit of reposting to keep it in people's minds.

Last week, a John Yoo memo was released - after much fighting to keep it secret, a secrecy it did not merit under any terms. The memo authorised torture; it authorised Presidential ignoring of and overriding of law; it asserted that Constitutional restraints (including the Bill of Rights) did not apply to the Chief Executive and "domestic military operations." Separately, Atty. General Mukasey invented a story about a call from an Afghani "safe house" that he claimed couldn't be tapped under standard FISA law. This was both a fabricated event, and an outright lie, and was part of an attempt to get unrestrained domestic warrentless wiretapping passed by Congress.

On Saturday, Glenn Greenwald did a series of searches of national newspapers, via the industry's NEXIS database. Here are his searches, and the hits counts:

"Yoo and torture" - 102
"Mukasey and 9/11" -- 73
"Yoo and Fourth Amendment" -- 16
"Obama and bowling" -- 1,043
"Obama and Wright" -- More than 3,000 (too many to be counted)
"Obama and patriotism" - 1,607
"Clinton and Lewinsky" -- 1,079

Stories pushing the faggotisation of Obama because he's not a very good bowler: 1043.
Stories pushing the idea that Obama is an Un-Patriotic Non-American: 1607.
Stories about the breathtaking dictatorial power grab by the Bush administration: 118.
Stories even talking about the blatantly fraudulent claim of Mr. Mukasey: 73.

Pathetic. And yet predictable - not just that, but exactly what we've been seeing, will continue to see, and should expect. The American media would be a comedy, were it not enabling power abuses so brutal. That makes it tragic.

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Here, these items have also been hanging around my brain:

Botnets are a criminal problem. Not a terrorism problem. It'd be nice if Congress could stop turning everything into terrorism.

Rail is expanding at a pace not seen since World War I. That's good. Not enough, but good. Oil broke $112 today, another new record by all measurements.

dogemperor posts about The Family, and Senator Clinton's ties to it. This is extremely disturbing if true, and dogemperor has a history of getting things right.

ETA: You should look at elfs's coverage of the fraudulent history text being used in many American high schools.

An econ post yay

Here, have a credit-market potpourri, before I get back to music stuff:

No more 100% LTV mortgages in Great Britain, which is not immune from the credit crunch and housing downturn. Meanwhile, Washington Mutual is getting out of the wholesale mortgage business entirely. They were a major wholesaler, so that's going to put another crimp on lending.

One of the current responses (this one by Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL)) is HR 5649, which nationalises $300B in mortgage debt. Read that again. US$300 billion:

6.A.1) AUTHORITY- The Corporation may issue bonds in an aggregate amount not to exceed $300,000,000,000, which may be sold by the Corporation to obtain funds for carrying out the purposes of this Act, or exchanged as hereinafter provided.

It also forgives underwater portions of loans acquired, lets people pick random-ass payment schedules, and all sorts of junk. It also authorises equity loans. Damn, that's a lot of new debt, and damn, that's one big hunk of nationalisation. But it is the sort of large-scale intervention the IMF wants, only it wants it globally. Hm, difficult.

Incidentally, pending home sales fell more than expected again in February. Boston Fed president Eric Rosengren is shocked! Shocked! that housing hasn't recovered yet.

Auction-rate securities auctions continue to collapse as well. Rates for municipalities are going through the roof, which is bad; Jefferson County, Alabama is desperately trying to avoid the largest government bankruptcy in history. Dole Foods and the Tribune Company are having to draw down on bank lines to avoid default. That's also bad. Student loans are facing more troubles as Education Resources Institute Inc. files Chapter 11. They're a student loan guarantor, reportedly a large one; bad again. But you are starting to see some more credit movement, even if it's discounted nontrivally. (Later reports put that at 85¢/$1, rather than 90¢.) And the commercial real estate bond spreads are, while still very high, out of crazytown. At least, the higher-rated tranches. That's good, too; we'll see whether it lasts.

But overall, the CEO of Morgan Stanley says things are the worst he's seen in 40 years. Alan Greenspan sees that and raises him a decade to 50 years. Oh, and oil bounced off a new intraday record of $112.21/barrel before closing at an astronomical $110.87. I'm already seeing $4/g for diesel; it looks like regular unleaded won't be that far behind.

Six days and counting

Today I woke up with a sore throat and panicked a little - but it turned out to be sinus, and not really throat. Hopefully that's all it is and all it's gonna be.

It took two sessions to get through the 9th. I sound rotten. But, two sessions is better than three is better than not getting through it before I have to stop.

Five additional rehearsal days remaining.